Imaginary Friends
by theRighteousMan
Summary: His entire life, there's been a man (well, three) peeking in his cupboard window, watching from a staircase, or standing there, behind his parents' graves. Sometimes there are people with him, sometimes he's alone, but he always comes when he's needed most. Harry's very own protector. / In other words, five times the Doctor visited Harry and the one time Harry got tired of waiting.
1. The First Time

the first time

Harry Potter was locked inside of the cupboard under the stairs. Again. And this time he hadn't even done anything to deserve it. He had not dropped the pan of eggs while he made breakfast. He had not woken Dudley up a whole two minutes early while using the vacuum.

No, because today was the day Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and greedy little four-year-old Dudley Dursley had decided they were long overdue for a good and proper family outing.

Of course, it went without saying – it _always_ went without saying – that Harry would not be accompanying them. No sir, this was a Dursleys-only trip, and no good-for-nothing freeloading Potters were allowed to ruin this day.

Besides, it was a rather common practice to take place under the roof of Number Four, Privet Drive, neglecting this tiny black and green orphan. The family kept him locked away, and to pretend that they weren't abusive and awful relatives, they also fed him their table scraps. There were, of course, also the game nights spent in the immaculate sitting room, during which Petunia and Vernon both threw several rounds of Cluedo so their darling son Dudley never had to experience being a loser. Meanwhile, Harry looked in on the scene from the kitchen, where he was scrubbing the grout between the floor tiles with a toothbrush.

There were all the first days of school when Harry would be gifted with stretched jumpers and jeans, hand-me-downs from his older-by-a-month, bigger-by-six-sizes cousin.

And who could forget all the summer vacations they took, in which Harry was put into the care of his batty neighbor, Mrs. Figg, who had too many cats to count and seemed to enjoy a square of stale cake with her daily cup of tea.

So no, a family outing between the three Dursleys – who were perfectly happy to say that they were a perfectly normal family with no supernatural secrets whatsoever – and no one else was really not the hardest thing to believe. However, what had left Harry in a state of confusion and fear was being completely alone in that horrid home, all greys and beiges and dull floral patterns, locked inside of a tiny cupboard under the staircase. The Dursleys always left him with Figg, only today he had overheard his uncle telling his aunt that she had to take her seventeen cats to the vet for their annual check-up, and the appointment would run for the duration of the day.

Definitely _not_ fair, in Harry's opinion.

Harry, in a state of frantic panic, had taken to poking his tiny, bony fingers through the grate on the door, wishing he knew magic so he could open the latch. However, as he was most definitely _not_ a wizard or anything of the like, he was stuck – and stuck well.

He sniffed softly, pulling his hand back into the darkness of his room. From his tiny prison cell, he could see the clock Aunt Petunia had hung on the wall next to the doorway to the kitchen. Its hands were long and made of metal strips bent into decorative curls, and the face was the antique yellow colour of an old envelope. The poor kid wasn't all too great at reading clocks yet, especially not the circle kind, but he did know that the short hand had moved from the halfway between the eight and the nine all the way to right in front of the four during the time he'd spent locked up.

Harry was hungry and cramped, and afraid of all the spiders that kept climbing onto his socks. Almost subconsciously, his small fingers poked out through the bars again. He pressed his tiny forehead against a small patch of wood on the oddly-shaped door that had been rubbed smooth through this practice. A tear welled in his eye, trickled down his left cheek and clung to his quivering chin for a moment before landing on the rough floor of the cupboard with the tiniest of splashes.

Immediately accompanying the sound was a loud banging noise, and then a dull thud, coming from the kitchen. Harry, his resentment for his tiny cell all but forgotten, pressed his face up against the brass grate so hard there was sure to be lines running vertically down his face for a while after he peeled his head away.

"Ow!" a voice stated from the room at the end of the hallway, somehow managing to sound both whiny and matter-of-fact at the same time. Harry could hear the mysterious intruder roving, and probably knocking Aunt Petunia's neat arrangement of furniture around, if he were to judge by the clacking, scraping noise of wood on wood.

"Hello?" Harry called hesitantly, hoping the mysterious man in the house was kind. Maybe he could let Harry out of the cupboard.

The sound of something metallic being dropped could be heard, followed by a loud exclamation of, "AH!" The man came sprinting out into the hallway, his boots thudding on the polished floor.

Harry blinked at the intruder, who was odd looking – and on top of that, wearing what was quite possibly the strangest array of clothing he had ever seen. For one, the man was tall and thin and pale as milk. His hair was brown and floppy, and mussed from the weird, red, cylindrical-shaped hat sitting atop his head. He whipped a pair of large round glasses, rather like little Harry's own pair, only these weren't held together in the middle by Scotch tape, out of the inside pocket of his fitted tweed jacket and slid them onto his face.

"Yes!" he shouted, and shoved the spectacles back into his coat. The boy got a glance of a solid red suspender strap hidden beneath the coat over the man's crinkled white dress shirt. "Harry Potter, age four. I think. Tell me, is it 1984?"

Harry's eyes trailed over the man's too-short brown trousers and ankle boots, before landing on a stiff blue bowtie secured around his white neck. That type of clothing was definitely not the kind of thing people wore these days. Could this be a "time-traveler", like the ones he sometimes heard about when Dudley was watching telly? He nodded excitedly.

"Good, good! 1984, George Orwell, a great book and a great man! Tell me, what month is it? Is it August? Oh, I love Augusts!"

Harry stared at the strange man standing right in front of his cupboard with wide eyes. "It's November."

"Oh, well Novembers are fun, too. Harry, some of my most favorite adventures took place in November. Like when I had a fancy dinner with some Native Americans and some British explorers over in America. Food was terrible though, one of the colonists left the fish over the fire too long." At Harry's blank look, the strange man jumped tracks. "Anyway, I'm the Doctor, that's D-O-C, T-O-R, just the Doctor, and nothing but the Doctor. And you're Harry Potter, currently living with your mum's horrid sister and her walrus of a husband. Oh yes, and their terrible little son. Doody?" Harry giggled. The Doctor's eyes flicked up to Harry's forehead, where Harry knew was a sharp and angry looking cut. Nervously, the toddler flattened his bangs over it.

Harry pressed his face harder into the grate. "How did you know that?" he whispered in awe.

The Doctor grinned. "I know lots of things, Harry, I'm the cleverest man in the universe, and definitely the most fun!" He reached back inside his tweed coat, and shoved his hand in his pocket almost all the way up to the elbow. "Let's see here…" he said, rummaging around in the space. "No, nope – oh that's where my rubber duck went! I missed this!" With a happy smile, the Doctor pulled a large yellow duck almost as big as his head out of the tiny jacket pocket. He kissed both of its cheeks in some strange greeting, and patted it on the head lovingly. With that, he tossed it over his shoulder as though it were trash and thrust his hand back inside his jacket.

Harry watched in amazement as finally the strange man yelled, "Ha!", and proceeded to bring his left forefinger up to his lips to shush himself. He then muttered something and smacked his cheek with his right hand, which was now holding a long, metal tube with a strange looking claw and a little green bulb on the end.

"What's that?" Harry asked, looking at the device then man had begun to fiddle with.

"It's a sonic screwdriver. It lets me do stuff, like open doors and fix things, and it even makes cool noises if you put it on setting G4583."

He pressed a button on the side of the tube and the end lit up with a loud and much exaggerated _BOING!_

"Wow," Harry breathed, looking at the device in the man's hand. "Like a magic wand!"

The Doctor brushed off the awe with a knowing smile and a laid back, "I know." He then put the screwdriver back into his jacket pocket, and pulled something out instead. "Now, Harry, I forgot! I came to give this to you. I'm not supposed to say anything to you, so… Now that that rule's been broken, we can move on to more exciting things. I have something for you, something you can't lose no matter what. This is very important, Harry, understand. Don't lose this. It's going to come in handy a long time from now, during a time when you feel like nothing will ever be okay again. But that's alright, because I've seen it, and it will be, eventually. You're so young right now…" he trailed off, looking forlornly at the floor.

"I was young too, or at least younger than I am now. And I hated myself for it, and you probably will too. So Harry, whatever you do, don't you dare lose this, because you'll need it one day. I –" he cut off, froze, and then slowly turned to look at the clock. The small hand was now balancing between the four and the five, and the big hand was on the six. Harry listened as Uncle Vernon's silhouette on the other side of the front door pushed the house key into the lock.

The Doctor wasted no time pulling out the strange tube item from his pocket and pointed it at the door. The lock, which had been beginning to turn, slid back into position as the tumblers clicked the door back into place. Outside, Harry's grouchy and tired uncle swore and kicked the door so hard it rattled in its frame. With a hurried, "I'll be seeing you soon, Harry Potter," the Doctor pushed something small and hard and tinkly through the bars on his door. It fell to the floor, into the darkness, so Harry couldn't see what it was. He knelt down, hands sweeping the dusty floor for his gift. His fingers landed on it just as the front door swing open and slammed into the hallway wall with a massive bang.

Quickly, he shoved the mystery item into his trousers pocket and stood up.

"BOY!" Vernon thundered, as though the lock re-engaging had been Harry's fault. Harry peered around for the Doctor, fearing what his uncle would do to the strange man in the blue bowtie, only to discover he had vanished in the few extra seconds it had taken for Vernon Dursley to wrestle open the front door.

Needless to say, Harry was sentenced to a cold and rather unsatisfying dinner of turkey fat and old carrot stubs for his "trick with the lock", as his uncle put it. It wasn't until very late that night that Harry remembered the strange gift that the even-stranger visitor had bestowed upon him, and reached into his pocket, curious as to what could be so important.

He clutched it in his fist, peered through the grate on the door to make sure no one was awake, and then pulled the small string to turn on the light. The tiny bulb lit up his equally as small living space with a dim yellow glow.

 _One_ , he counted in his head. _Two, three, and_ –! Harry opened his closed fingers and blinked at the trinket in his hand.

Lying in his palm was a small key, brilliantly shiny even in the dark, and with not a scratch on it. There was a small hole at the top, through which a stiff leather cord ran, making a necklace. It felt warm in his palm, and engraved along the side of the key was a string of words that sounded a rather lot like gibberish: Time and Relative Dimension in Space.

Harry tucked the key into a sock at the back of his drawer and grinned.

.

a.n: so, uh, not dead. Thought I should point that out. I can't remember the last time I was on FF, but it's been months. Life is busy right now – school is school, I did marching band last year and have been involved with this thing called FRC (look it up, it's amazing and basically my only output of friends and t-shirts and social outings) the past two years, and I also happen to be exceptionally good at making excuses, so thanks for sticking with me!

That being said, this is a compilation of six short one-shots, and all of them have ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN!, which means I'm sticking to a strict "once a week" posting schedule, and should not vary from that because I have no excuse now. Enjoy!

 _(extra a.n: there's a poll on my profile asking about what stories I should focus on next. Go check it out, browse the ideas I have planned out, and submit your input! Thanks!)_


	2. The Second Time

the second time

Harry Potter was thirteen years old, and was desperate for news from the Wizarding World. He had resorted to sitting at the park and eavesdropping on the Lewis family's television, which was right next to the playground, and which they turned to the news every day at exactly six. The volume was always fixed at exactly 33, which bothered Harry as it was an odd number. Nevertheless, it was easy to hear the anchors if he sat on the swings and made sure not to swing too fast or the chains would creak.

Their schedule was like clockwork: Mr. Lewis and Mrs. Lewis would always finish dinner at exactly 5:45, and would do the dishes until 5:58, by which time the very last plate was being wiped dry and set back in the cupboard. Mrs. Lewis would then gather her knitting supplies, which were all kept in a large wicker basket in her own cupboard under the stairs. Then, at exactly six o' clock, she and her husband would settle down, side by side, each with a cup of chamomile tea and black coffee respectively, to watch the news.

Harry always went home at varying times, so they never suspected anything, but he also always stayed for at least three quarters of the program. This had been going on all summer, and it was the end of July – in fact, his birthday was tomorrow.

Today, at only a couple of minutes past six, while listening for anything that could possibly be linked to Harry's hidden world, a sudden strange noise filled the air. With irritation clearly evident in Harry's frown, as he could no longer hear the anchorman describing the attack made on a small family in their home, Harry hopped off the still swing. He peered around at the streets surrounding the park, wishing to take his ever-growing temper out on somebody. However, Harry was the only human being in sight. He swept his angry stare over a row of boringly identical houses with identically manicured lawns, over the corner of the sidewalk, over the deep blue police box nestled at the other end of the park, over the field behind the swings, over –

Harry stilled very suddenly, and whipped his head around to stare at the box parked directly next to the slides. He had never seen this box before in his life.

Unable to focus on the news now that this strange blue enigma was sitting on the street corner, Harry abandoned his swing and slowly began plodding his way over to the box. He stood in front of the doors, and stared up at the backlit sign reading 'POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX' in black blocky letters. On the left door, another sign advised 'POLICE TELEPHONE, FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC. ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY. OFFICER AND CARS RESPOND TO ALL CALLS. PULL TO OPEN.'

With a hand on the wand he always kept tucked into the waistband of his jeans, Harry reached up for the silver handle on the bright blue door. He grasped it lightly, and gave a solid tug.

Only to go sprawling backwards onto the mulch of the park. Not only was it new and he was curious, but the stupid box was locked. With a start, he realized that the wood also seemed to be… humming.

Harry scowled and peeled himself off of the wooden chips. Feeling safe enough to not have a hand ready to whip his wand out at any second, Harry grabbed both handles this time and pulled again, feet firmly planted. Nothing. He tried pushing instead of pulling too. But the box stubbornly refused to open.

Stumped, Harry stepped back to examine the doors a little more. The blue panel beneath the sign seemed to have hinges. Harry pulled the hatch open to reveal an old time telephone – the kind where the earpiece was a cone and was attached to a cord – mounted to the box. He shrugged and picked up the receiver. Nothing. The phone wasn't even hooked up. With a frown, thirteen-year-old Harry Potter swung the hatch shut harder than necessary, and tried one last idea. He raised a fist and knocked soundly against the door three times.

He stepped back, only to catch himself actually waiting for someone to answer, as though he really believed there was a person locked inside a police box. Because the news was still playing, Harry turned to go back to his swing.

Only to be halted by the sound of a wooden door opening, someone stepping out, and then the same door closing. Slowly, Harry turned, hand hovering over his wand again.

"Very good," an eclectic man praised the bewildered teenager. "I was wondering how long it would take you to knock."

Harry was not to be deterred or distracted. "Who are you?" he demanded, pulling his wand out of his waistband, as he figured anyone with the ability to conjure a box from thin air was definitely a wizard. Well, that and his atrocious attempt at normal muggle clothing. "And how did you make this box appear?"

While the young wizard was no stranger to the absolute befuddlement that magical people felt when it came to dressing like muggles, Harry had never seen a fashion sense quite like the one of the man in front of him.

He did a better job than most wizards, but his brown pinstripe suit jacket and trousers didn't exactly match his black tie decorated with curling red roses. Even worse was the pair of strawberry red Chuck Taylor high tops – a shoe brand Hermione was known to wear every so often with her Hogwarts robes – tied up with brand new laces, still bright white. Over his suit was a long, brown trench coat with a hem that brushed the back of his calves. His hair was a shock of brown poking out over his head in spiky waves.

The wizard grinned jovially at Harry. "I'm the Doctor. Who're you?"

The Doctor. The mysterious man who broke into his home when he was four and gave him a key. As time had passed, and Harry had grown to actually understand what 'the Doctor' had once said, he began to believe him less and less. When was there going to come a time when some random key was going to be what he sorely needed?

Harry jabbed his wand towards the eccentric man. "You're not the Doctor. I've met the Doctor, and you don't look anything like him." It was true. While the Doctor he met had been on the shorter side, with skin nearly as white as milk, and a large flop of dark brown hair, this man was very tall and had a few freckles, and his skin was more peach than cream coloured. The only thing they had in common was a skinniness rivaling only Harry's own.

He seemed intrigued. "Really? A future incarnation then, I suppose. Definitely not a past one. I'd've remembered meeting such a sullen boy." He looked Harry up and down, taking in the boy's too-big clothing and worn trainers and wand still pointed unwaveringly at his large, sloped nose. His eyes flickered up to Harry's forehead. Harry flattened his bangs down nervously, a habit that had come out of his first meeting with the mysterious Doctor.

The man's eyes lit up with recognition. "Oh, this is brilliant! You're Harry Potter! I never thought I'd be seeing you again so soon! How old are you now? Twelve, thirteen?"

For a traitorous moment, Harry's mind flashed back to when he was four and locked up inside his cupboard, only to have a man climb through the kitchen window. He'd called himself the Doctor as well, and had known he was Harry Potter, too.

Harry blinked, taken aback, and lowered his wand out of shock. "'Course I am. You should know, you being a wizard and all. How'd you conjure this box? And what were you doing inside a police box anyway?"

The man muttered something to himself gleefully, before raising his voice and saying, "Oh, I'm not a wizard. Weell, I suppose some might _call_ me a wizard. I'd certainly make a very impressive wizard… But no, not me! As non-magic as they come, I am!"

"You're not a wizard?" Harry repeated, perplexed. At the man's shake of his head, Harry swore deeply under his breath. The Ministry of Magic would for sure have his wand for this one.

He raised his wand again, pointing it directly into the eccentric man's face. "If you're not a wizard, then how did you conjure the box? And how did you know who I am?"

The Doctor raised a hand and slowly pushed the wand tip out of his face. "Not exactly what you'd call a muggle, either," he admitted, plunging his hand inside his jacket. "Nope, not even human." He grinned quirkily at the puzzled teen, and pulled out a long silver tube, both thinner and shorter than the last time he'd seen it, and not gold and white and green anymore. Now it was silver and black and blue in colour.

"That's your, what… super screwdriver?" Harry asked, eying the device as the man pressed a button on the casing so that the end of the tube elongated. The Doctor spun in a slow circle, scanning the area around him.

The Doctor glanced over at Harry with an eyebrow raised. "Sonic," he corrected. "And right about now she seems _very_ happy to see you. She seems to be interacting with your wand there. Best put it away."

Harry nodded and tucked the wand into his pants. "Yeah. It looks a lot different. It used to be all –"

His sentence was quickly halted by the Doctor's hand over his mouth. "Ah ah ah! Better not," he warned Harry. "Can't have you go messing with the timelines by spoiling my future. _Especially_ about something as important as my sonic screwdriver." The device in his hands buzzed, and the Doctor brought it up close to his face. "I love my sonic screwdriver," he added with a cheeky grin.

The device beeped again, and he peered at the casing with squinted eyes. A bright blue light, the same colour as both the box, continued to spill out of the bulb at the tip. "You wouldn't happen to know where any spatial-hyperlinks are, would you?" At Harry's bewildered look, the Doctor shrugged. "I didn't think so. Well, Harry Potter, it was brilliant meeting you. Again." He grinned and winked at the bewildered young wizard. When he turned to re-enter his box when the door popped open again and an older woman with bright red hair poked her head out.

"Oi, Spaceman! You said you'd be quick!" she chided. She paused then, and glanced Harry over. "Who're you, sweetheart?" she added with a kind voice and a much softer expression, her eyes undoubtedly taking in the bruises on his forearms, the too-big clothing hanging off his near-skeletal frame, and the worn out trainers on his feet.

Harry tucked his wand back into his baggy jeans. "'M Harry Potter," he told her, offering her a hand. She gaped at him.

"Shut! Up! Really? Doctor, is this really–?!" she all but squealed. She went to say something more when the Doctor, still trying to enter the box, shook his head, abruptly cutting her off.

"Best not, Donna."

"Right, _sorry_ ," she huffed. "But I am a huge fan! Good to meet you, Harry, love. Take care!" With that, she ducked back inside the box.

"Well, better get going. Like she said, Harry, nice meeting you."

Harry, in a completely panicked fashion, lunged and grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Wait! Are you ever going to come back?" He then dropped the Doctor's arm and backed away, face already turning pink and rather thoroughly humiliated.

"Well you'd better count on it," this strange man promised. With a wink, he followed the ginger woman back inside.

Harry watched in amazement a moment later as the strange blue telephone box faded from view, the noise he had heard upon its arrival accompanying it.

And it was definitely worth it when Aunt Petunia locked him in his room with no dinner for getting home a whole twenty minutes after darling Duddykins.

.

a/n: Thanks to everyone who's favorited/followed. Now, please please please drop a review for me. Takes ten seconds: "love your story, keep it up!" Love you all. Till next Sunday then.


	3. The Third Time

the third time

The third time Harry Potter met the Doctor was the first time the Doctor met Harry Potter. Harry was fifteen years old (just barely), it was the summer after the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry was sitting inside his bedroom at Number twelve, Grimmauld Place, fuming as yet another Order of the Phoenix meeting convened downstairs in the kitchen. He was completely and utterly unconcerned, thanks _very_ much, that they were most likely talking of nothing but him and this secret weapon Riddle was trying to get his filthy – but unfortunately very real – hands on.

He was even less concerned by the fact that Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and even Fred and George had been giving him a relatively wide berth ever since his rather noisy tantrum upon his arrival at Sirius's home.

So he sat and he waited on his bed, even when he could hear his friends next door, in the room Hermione and Ginny were sharing, playing Gobstones. He happened to be in a remarkably foul mood, one that he doubted would be appeased by anything other than some information. Unluckily for him, nobody had deemed him _that_ infuriating yet, even with his sour looks and his arms that seemed to stay firmly crossed, even while he slept.

A loud crack emanated from the floor above him, and Harry looked up, immediately aware that Fred and George were having another go at their newly acquired apparition skills. In fact, they seemed to be apparating at least a couple dozen times a day, and for any reason at all: to go to the bathroom, to wake up Ron (and by default, seeing as they were bunking together, Harry) in the middle of the night, to fetch something from their trunks during dinner.

To be honest, the stewing (and somewhat hormonal) teenage wizard had had quite enough of listening to that god awful cracking noise, and finally heaved himself off of his bed, determined to go sit in the hall downstairs and wait for the Order to get out of the kitchen.

He trudged out of the bedroom, down the hallway, and stepped onto the landing, arms crossed and purposefully ignoring the loud sounds of laughter and the squishing as the Gobstones spat ooze.

Harry had never managed to get a better impression of the entry hall of Number twelve, Grimmauld Place in the little time he'd spent there. It was still gloomy and very grey in colour, with a large array of shriveled house elf heads mounted upon the wall. The umbrella stand Tonks had taken to knocking over almost every time she walked past was still there by the door, the chandelier hanging down from the third floor was still caked in sticky cobwebs, and everything was still rather dusty.

With a heavy sigh, Harry sat down. Sure, it was dank and eerie and kind of gross, but it was also quiet and not ruined by the laughter of those traitorous people he called friends. He huffed like a child and leaned back against the front door.

Only to jump forwards again, startled by a quiet and firm knocking that rumbled the heavy wooden slab.

Startled, Harry scrambled away on hands and knees, kicking up a large cloud of dust from the ancient carpet while he was at it. Nobody was supposed to be able to see the house, right? So how could there be someone knocking on the front door?

They – whoever they was – knocked again.

Harry looked around. The Order obviously hadn't heard, or they would have swarmed the hallway by now. Perhaps it was an Order member running late. Resolved, Harry stood and – in one of his more severe lapses of common sense – opened the door to the Order of the Phoenix's headquarters.

Only to find a rather strange pair standing there. A girl was holding a rather intricate looking device, and the bloke staring up at the front of the house in confusion.

"Who're you?" the man standing on the front stoop asked, rather rudely.

"Who am I? Who're you?" Harry snapped right back, some of his sour mood leaking out through his words. "And how'd you get this address?"

The man squinted at Harry. "We didn't get this address, we saw a house on the street giving off some strange readings and knocked on the door. That alright with you?"

Harry spluttered. "You can't just decide you're going to come up to this house, you have to know it's here!" He eyed the strangers in front of him suspiciously. "Are you Death Eaters?" Immediately following that question, Harry mentally smacked himself upside the head. What kind of a Death Eater would admit being a Death Eater to the Boy Who Lived?

This man sure didn't look like a Death Eater, what with his enormous ears and close cropped black hair and large nose. Death Eaters also never lowered themselves to dressing in muggle clothing, not even ominous leather jackets and heavy black boots and olive coloured jumpers.

The girl (she definitely wasn't a Death Eater, with her bottle blonde hair and very dark eyes and Union flag tee), who had been immersed in the gadget in her hand up until this point in the conversation, looked up, her eyebrows furrowed. "What, like in the books?"

Harry stared at her. "Huh?"

"Yeah, in the Ha –" Her sentence was cut off by the man slapping his hand over her mouth.

"Timelines, Rose," he reminded her in a condescending voice, although his eyes were soft. Rose rolled her eyes, but nodded. He took his hand off her mouth. She wiped her mouth on her jacket sleeve, shooting a teasing look up at the man.

"Yeah, I know, I know, ya big lutz. Anyway, this here's my friend John Smith, and I'm Rose, and we were wonderin' if we could have a look at yer house real quick. John 'n I are the electricians. Yer mum or dad must've called. Won't take a mo."

Harry stared at them a moment, then promptly tried to slam the door shut on the two characters standing on the stoop.

However, 'John Smith's' foot had somehow made its way over the threshold, preventing Harry from locking them out. "What'd you do that for?" he demanded in a thick northern accent. "We need to have a look at the lights."

Harry was not amused. He tried to slam the door again. 'Smith' stopped him again.

"Here, I've got identification. John Smith and Rose Tyler, electricians with Gallifreyan electric company. Now let us in. Are your parents around, yer mum said she needed to talk to us." He flashed Harry an opened leather wallet, in which a slip of blank white paper sat, all while trying to push past the doubtful teenager.

"That paper is blank," Harry told them, stopping 'John Smith' in his tracks.

Rose tugged on the man's leather jacket sleeve. "Doctor –" she started, only to be cut off by Harry.

" _Doctor?_ " he demanded. " _You're_ the Doctor?"

The man grinned a toothy smile. "That's my name. 'Eard of me, have you?"

Harry continued on, nonplussed. "So who's the real Doctor then? You or the guy with the bowtie? Or is it the man in the high tops?"

Rose looked at Harry blankly. " _This_ is the Doctor," she said, a little more forcefully than she had spoken before. She pursed her big lips and stared at the suspicious boy with a frown.

"So the man in the pinstripes with the big blue police box that vanishes isn't the Doctor then? Or is he the Doctor and the man with pockets that could house an entire wardrobe is an imposter?"

"Doctor," Rose said, rounding on him. "Does someone have your Tardis? Is there another Time Lord out there?" However, the Doctor's attention was firmly locked onto Harry. "Doctor?" she asked again.

"Who're you then? How d'you know who the Doctor is?" Rose demanded suddenly, whirling on Harry standing solidly in the doorway. Harry pulled his wand from his back pocket, whipping it up so that it pointed squarely at her round face. She opened her mouth to yell at him. He cut her off all too gladly. Harry had a feeling he wouldn't like this girl should they ever meet again. She was much too loud and accusatory.

"I'm Harry Potter. And I'm going to ask one more time. How the hell are you standing here?"

The Doctor backed up as though someone had set fire to his leather jacket. "Harry Potter?" he repeated incredulously, blinking owlishly at the angry teen. Rose stared cross-eyed and terrified down the shaft of Harry's wand. His head whirled around to stare at the street sign on the corner, the one he'd neglected to check before knocking on the door of this very strongly hidden house.

 _Grimmauld Place._

Oh. That explained the strange readings. And Harry's angry wand waving and demanding to know how the Doctor was even able to see the house, let alone stand on the front stoop and knock on the door.

"C'mon, Rose," the Doctor implored, taking the blonde's hand and gently tugging her back down the steps. She glanced back over her shoulder as though she was thoroughly wishing she had gotten that scream in, but obediently followed the Doctor down the steps and back into the street. Harry watched them go, and when they had reached the other end of the crosswalk, the man pulled out a key and inserted it swiftly into a large blue police box. So this was the Doctor still, only his face was different yet again.

When would Harry ever begin to understand this enigma that was the Doctor? With a shake of his head, Harry finally closed the front door, only to hear the sounds of the Order concluding their meeting. A steady stream of wizards swarmed out of the kitchen and down the hall and past Harry, out into the evening. Behind them came Mrs. Weasley, wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon.

"Come on then, Harry dear. Dinner is almost ready. You can help me set the table."

Harry followed her into the kitchen wearing the first smile his face had seen all summer.


	4. The Fourth Time

the fourth time

The fourth time Harry met the Doctor, they said nothing to each other. He was back to his original bowtie-and-tweed ensemble. Harry almost overlooked him at first, as he was wandering Hogwarts, Sirius's very recent death heavy on both his heart and his mind. Then he happened a glance up a few floors and there the pale-skinned, floppy-haired, fez-wearing strange man was, staring somberly down at Harry from a moving staircase. Finding himself unable to care how the Doctor got in, or why, Harry nodded solemnly to him, and walked on. The Doctor stared back.

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a/n: keep going. You get one more.


	5. The Fifth Time

the fifth time

Almost two years passed before Harry found the Doctor again. During that time Harry had begun clutching his wand a little tighter and enjoying the rare happy moments he got a little more. He had finally gone back to the Dursley's former home – and his former prison – and had dug around in that old sock drawer. When he left that day, his pocket was just a little bit heavier.

Now, with Bathilda Bagshot dead and Godric's Hollow properly destroyed, he stood outside in the graveyard with Hermione, staring down at his parent's graves. It was sixteen years ago that Voldemort had come here with murder on his mind, and left with a casualty list that was two names longer. He had killed Harry's parents because he was scared. Scared of what Harry could do to him. _Would do to him, in time_ , Harry thought ferociously.

The knowledge of that gave Harry a sort of resigned strength. Voldemort had feared his family. Despite all of the losses that happened so recently, and the grim reminder in his gut that hope shrunk by the day, Harry felt just a little more unstoppable.

And tired. He also felt dead on his feet, in need of a long bath and an even longer nap.

"Harry," Hermione prompted, shaking his arm a bit to get his attention.

"Hm?" Harry muttered in response, staring down at the two gleaming graves.

Hermione sighed and wrapped her arm around his waist. He hadn't realized it, but the air was getting increasingly colder, and he suddenly welcomed the addition of body heat. "I'm going to pop inside for a bit. Try not to get eaten out here, okay?"

Harry smiled and turned to meet Hermione's stare. "Or expelled, yeah?"

Hermione smacked his arm with one gloved hand.

"Ow!" he protested. She only smiled innocently and turned, picking her way through the foot of fluffy snow ensnaring their feet. A moment later and she was gone, back inside the ruined house. Harry was alone. He looked down at the graves again. It was too quiet now.

As if on cue, a loud screeching noise filled the air. It had been years since Harry had heard that sound, and oh how he welcomed it now. Ron was gone, and the power of his parents was slowly fading. He felt like a little boy again, standing out in the snow because Dudley had locked him out and desperately wishing a man and woman would show up claiming to be his mother and father and would whisk him away to spoil him the way Dudley was spoiled.

Dark as the sky at dusk, that bloody blue box slowly reappeared, and with it the strange man in the leather jacket. He stepped out of the box and into the snow, his dark boots and long trousers sinking into it as he did. A pile of snow spilled into the machine.

" _Fantastic_ ," he grumbled, kicking at the frozen water. Behind him, the blonde girl from when he was fifteen hovered, standing on her tiptoes to peek at Harry over the Doctor's shoulder. Harry couldn't quite recall her name, but he was sure she was named after some kind of flower. Was it Daisy? Blossom? Surely it wasn't Lily; he would have remembered a person with that name, and especially a person so feisty.

There was another man with them too, tall and dark haired with a jutted chin, who just so happened to be smiling right at Harry. He popped his suspenders, which were dark blue and stood out starkly against his crisp white shirt. "Well hi there," he greeted Harry with a warm, full-toothed smile. He had bright white teeth that gleamed whiter than the powder on the ground. Against his own will, Harry flushed deeply at the jaunty wink the man sent. "I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and may I just ask, who're you?"

"Stop it," the Doctor muttered absentmindedly, still sweeping his boots at the pile of snow with agitation. "He's seventeen."

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry offered as consolation to the put-out Captain Jack Harkness. Jack grinned at him, and raised his hand to his ear in mimicry of a telephone. The blonde (Tulip?) swatted at his arm with a stern _"No, Jack!",_ a reprimanding tone, and a wide grin.

The Doctor looked up from his task just long enough to thank the blonde.

And that was another thing. Harry had given up trying to figure out the three-man enigma after he saw the Doctor again at Hogwarts, the original Doctor who was creamy-white in the skin and had floppy brown hair and was wearing a bow tie that matched his disappearing, noise-making box.

"Hello again, Doctor," Harry greeted. The Doctor glanced up, almost as if he was surprised and had forgotten that Harry was standing right in front of them.

The blonde girl waved a bit from behind the sulking Doctor, who was still struggling to sweep that blasted snow out of his police box. After another fruitless attempt, the man gave up. "Hello, Harry!" he beamed, and his northern accent folded the words into something familiar. "We meet again, then."

It felt different this time though. Harry was of age now, no longer gasping at a simple Transfiguration spell. Even now that he could finally glance inside that blue police box, the enormity of the inside was no shock to him. The Doctor had lost some of his wonder.

A pang struck Harry deep inside. He shivered, and drew his arms close to him. He truly was a grown-up, fighting in his grown-up war.

"Maybe we'd better go," the Doctor said, taking in the blue tinge to Harry's skin and the goosebumps freckling his arms and neck. No doubt he also saw Harry's expression, sad and contemplative, and his weathered eyes. "You ought to get inside and get warmed up, eh?"

"No, no, s'alright," Harry said, not wanting to go back to the quiet mourning he had just been in. "Just had a thought, is all."

"Oh. Does that happen often then?" the Doctor asked, a cheeky smile tugging at the corners of his straight mouth.

Rose _(that was it! Rose!_ he remembered very suddenly, a triumphant smile forming in the back of his mind _)_ hid a bemused smile behind her mitten-clad hands.

Harry huffed a laugh. A small puff of steam rose from his lips, which had gone thin and white in the time he'd been standing outside. "More than you'd think," he replied. He went to say more when a female voice interrupted him – Hermione – calling from the window of Godric's Hollow. Warm yellow light spilled from the kitchen windows out onto the white snow and into the dark night.

"Harry?" she called, although her face didn't appear in the window. She was probably sitting in front of the fire, growing warmer by the second. "I found some butterbeer in my bag. You coming?"

The young wizard turned back to his friends – could you call a person you've only met once every few years a friend? – with an apologetic smile. "I should go," he said. "Hermione's been wound up pretty tight since Ron left."

The Doctor nodded along, even waving him away from the graves. "Go on," he urged. Rose said something that was ripped away by the wind, but she was smiling herself. The Doctor and Jack Harkness barked a laugh at it, whatever it was.

Feeling a lot better than he had in a long time, Harry trudged back through the small graveyard and into the house. He stopped once, just before the backdoor, to slide his hand into his pocket. The key, freezing cold and still on its chain, was like an anchor to the strange man he had seen five times now. Slowly, he slid it out of his pocket. He looped the chain around his neck, and the key fell against his chest with a light thump. The wheezing noise started up again, and Harry looked up to watch for a moment as that deep blue color that he had grown to love faded from view. That box had become something of a gift, to look up and see that strange man, whichever face he was wearing, smiling at him. With so few people he could trust these days, kindly familiar faces were a godsend.

With a grin, Harry turned and stepped into the kitchen, where Hermione sat waiting with a mug of heated butterbeer.

"What was that noise," she asked of Harry, who grinned back at her. He looked absolutely manic, with white powdered snow dusting the top layer of his hair and the skin on his cheeks and hands burning bright pink from the cold. "What?" she demanded.

Harry gripped the key around his neck a little tighter. He hoped that he wasn't imagining it growing warmer in his palm and glowing a faint gold. "Haven't the faintest."

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a/n: yeah, I'm not that cruel. This was the second to last update! So many favorite-ers and followers, I'm honored guys. I really appreciate everyone who's taken the time to read this, so thank you. Shout out to my reviewers, you guys keep me writing. Please, if you're liking this story, drop a quick review to let me know how you feel about this. It takes ten seconds and every single one makes my day.

 _Also_ , seeing as this story is almost complete, hop on over to my profile and put in your thoughts towards my next project on my poll. I recently started writing again for my When in Goode rewrite, Of Monsters and Mortals (working title), which is the favorite as of right now, so that's exciting. Let me know what you think. See you next Sunday!


	6. Plus 1: The Sixth Time

(plus one) the sixth time

It was when Harry was standing in the courtyard of Hogwarts, which was still under construction, that his mind turned over to the mysterious Doctor for what felt like the millionth time. Maybe it was because he had finally gotten the free time to think, with Voldemort dead and the Death Eaters scattered into the wind. For the first time in his life, Harry felt truly free. And without his mind being gnawed at by the knowledge that every passing second was bringing Harry closer and closer to the conclusion of the prophecy, there was so much room for thinking of other things.

The Doctor was an 'other thing'.

Harry had never told another human being of the existence of the Doctor, even if little four year old Harry had whispered the story of the crazed man who broke in Uncle Vernon's house and gave Harry a little trinket to the spiders in his socks more times than he could count. He was like a hero to young Harry, one that he had been positive he had imagined until that fateful day in the summer between his second and third year at Hogwarts.

With a steady hand, Harry pulled the key out from under his shirt. This little key, which had been with him since he was four, had been in his possession for thirteen years. (Thirteen was a lucky number, if Harry believed what he heard.) He wondered if it actually unlocked something special, or if the Doctor had found it in the back of some cupboard one day and decided it would make a nice present for a scared little boy.

He stared at the key with a kind of longing. The war was over and the skies had cleared, but the fear and anger and loss still raged on inside Harry, waging its never-ending battle in his heart. So many people were gone; people he cared about who had died in his name, and yet when the ashes were settled, Harry was still standing.

He gripped the key tight and wished the Doctor were here.

"Oh, Harry," a voice from behind him said. "I'm so, so sorry."

Harry whirled in place. He hadn't heard that voice in four years, not since he was thirteen and sitting alone in a park.

Several meters away, the Doctor stood watching him. (This was the Doctor with the spiky hair and the brown pinstripes. Harry had long since given up caring that there were three.) His eyelids looked heavy gazing upon all of those piles of rubble on the ground.

"How did you get here?" Harry asked, blinking from the Doctor's sad form down to the innocuous little key around his neck.

The Doctor flashed an open leather wallet at Harry. "Got this." Inside the wallet was a slip of clean white paper. Harry's messy scrawl rose to the surface of the page, almost as though Harry himself was writing it. _I wish the Doctor were here,_ it read _._ It reminded Harry of Tom Riddle's old diary. The Doctor shoved the wallet back into his trench coat. Harry stuffed the key back under his shirt.

"I think I always knew…" the Doctor began, and then trailed off, eyes boring into Harry's own. Harry looked so old, so tired and dirtied. "Well, I know how it sits in a heart."

"How what sits in a heart?" Harry asked quietly.

The Doctor fixed Harry with a level stare. "How it feels to watch your home burn down. To watch the people you knew and loved die. To feel betrayed and enlightened at the same time. To survive when you were sure you were going to die. To–" he cut off sharply, and broke Harry's gaze. He drifted over to the edge of the bridge, placing a hand on the stone wall. His eyes turned downward, into the chasm below. "To survive, only to feel lost and guilty and afraid."

The Doctor looked so broken right then and there; it seemed as if even his hair had begun to droop. It appeared as though the sky had just settled itself on the Doctor's shoulders.

The two remained quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of cinderblocks whooshing through the air behind them. The Doctor stared at the ground hundreds of meters below them, and Harry stared at the Doctor.

"Well," the Doctor said all of a sudden, looking up. His eyes were still drooping and his enthusiasm felt forced, but his smile seemed genuine. "Are you ready?"

"Um, ready for what exactly?"

"You didn't think I just kept popping into your life for no reason, did you? Granted, the first time we met was completely by accident, but every other time? Fixed point. Anyway, are you coming?"

"A what?"

"Fixed point in time, not worth explaining. My question was, are you coming?"

Harry paused. "Erm, coming… where, exactly?"

"Follow me," the Doctor implored. He put one hand into the pocket of his trench coat, digging for something. As he searched, he began to walk back across the bridge, away from Hogwarts and towards the forest. Still the danger-drawn child with zero self-preservation in his bones that he once was, Harry followed him.

Once off the bridge, the Doctor led Harry into the woods. His hand had moved from his left pocket to his right one, still groping blindly for something.

They stopped almost a hundred meters into the woods, not far by any means, but deep enough to mask the thing the Doctor had been talking about: his big blue box, looking charred around the base and dusty in the windows but still glowing with a golden sort of power. The key around Harry's neck began to act up again, searing a white heat into his chest.

"Ow!" Harry grunted. He yanked the key out from under his shirt by the chain. It was glowing bright gold.

The Doctor looked over, concerned. He spotted the key around Harry's neck and his face lit up. "Oh, that'll do fine! Where's you get this then?" He held his hand out for the key.

Harry reluctantly pulled the chain from his neck. "You gave it to me."

"Did I? When was this?" the Doctor asked, all the while taking the key and jamming it into the lock on the blue box.

"When I was four and your future self broke into the Dursley's house."

"Well that was smart of future me. I'll have to write a reminder to make sure I do that again, otherwise we'd have been out here for hours – look how deep my pockets go!" To emphasize his point, the Doctor shoved his arm deep into his coat, all the way up to his elbows. "Who knows where my key has gone?"

"Erm…"

The Doctor laughed. "But that's not why I've brought you here to my box, oh no. This is why."

With a flourish, the Doctor pushed open the doors to his beloved blue box. Golden light spilled from the doors. Harry could just barely see inside, to where a large round console filled a large round room. Coral fixtures grew in snaking patterns up the walls of the dome-shaped space. The floor was a series of metal grates. Most importantly–

"It's bigger on the inside," Harry said, looking around the room with disbelief. It was a lot like the Weasley's tent, only way bigger. Even from the entryway, Harry could see a door across the room, which surely led to more space. And yeah, Harry had seen into this box before, and he had known what was coming. But it was like stepping into a whole new dimension.

The Doctor grinned delightedly, and pulled Harry inside by the arm. The doors swung shut behind them.

"Are you sure you're not a wizard, Doctor?" Harry asked, marveling the golden room with awe.

"Positive!" the Doctor replied with a huge smile on his face, no longer the sad old man that he was on the bridge He skipped up the mesh walk and bounced over to the console with glee. He began fiddling with the buttons and knobs on the dashboard, fingers tapping on gauges and flipping switches.

Harry wandered over to him, curious. "So what is this place? What does it do? Where does it go?"

"Everywhere! Anywhere! Any place or time, wherever you care to imagine."

"So it's a time machine?" Harry asked. "You can go any place in time, all around the world?"

The Doctor beamed. "Exactly! But it's not just this world, Harry, oh no! Anywhere in the universe, to any of the many worlds and galaxies and stars and beyond!"

Harry stopped for a moment to process this information. It seemed impossible. Not even Time Turners could accomplish that. But this was the Doctor – his imaginary friend, his protector. The man who'd been watching over Harry his whole life. Back when Harry was four and the Doctor was still a mysterious man fresh in his mind, Harry had believed he could do anything. Maybe he hadn't been wrong. He could be standing in something far more magical than any wizard had ever seen. He could go anywhere in any time. He could meet anyone.

Anyone.

The Doctor stared at Harry expectantly. Harry looked up at him and grinned, his smile the biggest and happiest and most pure that it had been in years. _He could meet anyone._ The Doctor took this as a very good sign, smiling back in response. He leapt back into action, readying the big blue box.

Harry walked up to the console and pressed his hands to the dash. Pure power ran underneath his fingers. Anyone. Anywhere. Any-when. This box could take him there.

"What's this place called?" he asked.

The Doctor was still springing around the circular dash, pulling levers and inputting long strings of numbers into keypads. "This is the TARDIS. Stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Like I said, she can take us anywhere, to any time. To any star in the sky. You just have to imagine. So, Harry Potter." Harry looked up at the Doctor. "The Boy who Lived, the Chosen One, Savior of the Wizarding World. I do suppose that begs the question. Where do you want to go first?"

.

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 _Fin._

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a.n: I don't really have a sequel planned but after writing this, I can definitely think of some ideas for one. If you're interested, please drop a review and let me know if you think that's a good idea, or if you have any ideas for a plot. Or maybe you think this is a good conclusion as is, open-ended and all. Either way, let me know! Thanks for sticking with me!


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